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Tag: music industry

The ISP industry doesn’t tell the music or film/TV industries how to make music or film/TV programmes (unless you’re an ISP owned by a film & TV company – but that’s a whole different story), so don’t tell those in the ISP industry how to police content. Putting aside the technological issue for the moment, it is the same as asking the Post Office to open every single letter to check the content’s legality. And there is the whole thing about trying to understand and control another industry – you just can’t do that. Especially if you have no experience of running a telecommunications company.

And then there are the takedown reports. Just how accurate are they? I read many reports that automated takedowns are becoming more and more erroneous – asking companies such as Facebook or Google to take down their own home pages. Even film studios themselves have been asked to take down their own home pages – by themselves!

We have the justice system for a reason – to determine whether something is right or wrong, and to act upon it. This is why I strongly advocate the use of court orders against ISPs when there is reasonable evidence to suspect something is wrong. That it must be the copyright owner’s responsibility to flag up potential issues, get a court order, then get the ISP to take down and provide the court with the potential offender’s details. ISPs are not the police, the courts or anything else. They provide a communications service. It must remain as such. If the media think otherwise, they are greatly mistaken.